Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2016-04-14-Speech-4-067-000"
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"en.20160414.5.4-067-000"2
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"Mr President, my report on the private sector in development breaks new ground. It provides a solution to the huge financial shortfalls in funding created by the development agenda for the next 15 years. The success of the millennium development goals in the past 15 years has provided ample evidence of how to get it right in the next 15 years, but one billion people still live on less than USD 1.25 per day and more than 800 million people do not have enough food to eat. Poverty is not eliminated by hand-outs. It is only wealth creation that ends poverty. We have 15 years to fix that with the new 17 sustainable development goals announced at the United Nations last year. But how can we fund this? Lofty ambitions to end poverty in all its forms everywhere come with a huge price tag. Climate change mitigation alone will cost USD 250 billion. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development projects a funding gap – yes, I repeat, a funding gap – of USD 2.5 trillion for the sustainable development goals. This is a staggering sum, a sum that is beyond comprehension to our European taxpayers, a sum that the already struggling European taxpayer cannot even begin to shoulder.
My report highlights that such a funding shortfall can be adequately met only if the private sector is involved in development, not through more taxes, but through partnership. But first we have to end the tax fraud in developing countries, which accounts for losses of nearly 1 trillion annually through illicit funding. Money that should stay in those countries is brought to Europe and other offshore accounts and hidden away by the elite of those countries. We have to make sure that those funds stay in those countries to be used for the development of those countries. Secondly, we have to demand that the OECD members match their 1970 pledge of 0.7% of GNI. Thirdly, the sustainable development goals will require the drive, the managerial skill and the commitment of our private sector partners, for it is the private sector which creates 90% of jobs and income for poor people in developing countries, alongside donors, civil society and trade partners. Fourthly, public-private partnerships must mobilise long-term – not short-term – private finance and hold the private sector accountable to public sector tendering processes, transparency and scrutiny.
So this report calls for the private sector to invest in building and running schools; digging for wells and irrigating agriculture; building, running and maintaining hospitals and hospital services; building, owning, and operating roads, airports, and harbours; and setting up meat-, fruit- and vegetable-processing factories, all of which will create jobs and wealth in the developing countries, done in partnership with the public sector and pump-primed by EU development assistance.
If we mean to offer the billion people still living in abject poverty the dignity of work and of earning a living wage, then we must seize this opportunity before us now and get on with it. I therefore commend this report to Parliament and, in doing so, I want to thank my colleagues in the Development Committee from all the political groups who have assisted and supported me in this, and I particularly thank Ms Ingrid Russell, my research assistant, for doing all the hard work."@en1
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